“Ho ho!” our guide called out, holding a long black umbrella with a curved handle into the air. “Ho ho! This way!” He was a thin man of medium height with a brown-and-gray beard, dressed in a long, white linen, Obi-Wan Kenobi-style robe and wearing dark aviator sunglasses.
We shuffled behind him through the upward-sloping, narrow streets of Fez, Morocco, a group of 50 or so college students making our way between the dull brown buildings of this town perched on a hill. We were mid-way through a school-sponsored trip to Portugal and Morocco. At age 19, it was only the second time I’d ever been abroad and everything felt incredibly foreign.
The street leveled off and opened up ahead. The closer we got to the slope’s summit, the stronger the stench became. Reaching the top, we saw what was causing the odor: the tannery. At least two dozen giant vats were packed into what seemed to be an immense pit the size of a vacant house lot back home. Their tops were nearly level with the roofs of the adjacent buildings and they were open to the sky. Inside each pot, reddish and brown liquid bubbled and stewed, releasing steam. Animal hides hung over the sides of pots and on lines rigged up around them. The smell was a combination of barnyard animals, rotting flesh, and chemicals.
A network of rough-hewn wooden planks zig-zagged among the vats, allowing access to each one. Our guide led us onto this elevated walkway, where we peered uneasily at the huge pots below and tried not to inhale too deeply. Nimble young men hurried along them from vat to vat, tending to business. Some stirred the potions with long wooden sticks while others stared at us curiously. My friend Rob lit a cigarette in an effort to repel the odor and, although I’d always found cigarette smoke disgusting, I didn’t turn my face away from it this time. Obi-Wan Kenobi must have given us some sort of educational lesson about the tannery as we threaded our way around the vats, but I don’t recall it.
Leaving the tannery after what felt like an age but was probably no more than 15 or 20 minutes, we continued through the town, working our way gradually upwards again until we emerged onto a large open balcony of sorts. Below us, a vast expanse of Moroccan desert swept around the town like an ocean surrounds an island, giving way to a ring of low mountains in the distance on one side. The sand sparkled and shimmered in the light of the setting sun. I breathed in deeply, clearing my lungs and nostrils of the pungent smells of the tannery.
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